I have become a warrior.

I don’t feel like a warrior. Far from it. For much of my life, I have lived in a place of fear. Fear of my father. Fear of failing. Fear of anger. Fear of doing the wrong thing. Fear of things I could not even describe. Often, very often, that fear would paralyze me, hold me back, stall me, and at times, even cause the very thing I was afraid of.

People who have known me peripherally would be very surprised at this. To the outside eye, I don’t seem to be a fearful person. I work in sales, where rejection is a way of life. I have a long history of jumping into things I know nothing about and doing well. I’ve directed music groups when I can’t read music. I began my life as a bible teacher, when I had almost no bible background. I have gone for, gotten and succeeded in jobs over the years that I had no business even applying for. I have been called a risk taker by many of my friends.

But the truth is, every one of those plunges were full of fear. And the fear has never lessened. I still feel it. Often. Like depression, it is part of my daily battle.

There have been times in my life that fear was a prison. But I have always fought it. Sometimes with success, sometimes with abject failure. For many years, I didn’t even know what it was, what caused me to freeze, to stop, to cower. It took a fine counselor to help me discover what was really going on, and get the tools to help myself, to wage the war.

I didn’t go looking to deal with fear. I went because I was a broken man and needed help. I wasn’t even sure what help I needed. I just knew I was in a place I could not stay in. She worked with me, every week, for three and a half years. I continued the work for a while after I moved to Vermont. It was the hardest, most painful work I have ever done.

One of the themes we worked on was my fear. recognizing it. learning to work with it. Separating fear from realty. Separating fear from actions. Putting it in it’s place.

Why do I write of this now? Because recently several things have reared their heads, and the fears came rushing back. Never mind the details, they are mine to deal with, but as I have fought them back, the lessons I learned have rushed to my defense again, and I am grateful. What lessons?

• Fears are feelings, not reality. I am not dismissing the power and reality of feelings. Hardly that, since I am a feeler to my core. But somewhere I had to understand that all those things I feared were not likely to happen. Not in reality. And the few that did? I was able to handle them. I was, it turned out, stronger than I thought, stronger than I gave myself credit for. And I’ve learned that this is true of most of us. Things that we think will break us won’t, unless we decide to let them. This was not an easy lesson to learn. Not at all.
• Being a reed is better than trying to be a tree. We all want to be strong. Heaven knows I want to be. But with fear, it’s better to be able to simply acknowledge the feeling and let it wash over you like a reed, then rise as the initial fury of fear passes by. Trees stand strong….. until the break. Reeds bend, and rise, ever present, surviving all. Now, when fear strikes, I pause. I sleep on it. I let the feeling wash over me and at times it’s damned unpleasant and hard. But if I don’t fight it, I come out on the other side and can move past it. Many forms of martial arts advocate letting your enemy attack you, and letting the effort of your enemy work against him, letting him pass before you strike. Fighting fear uses a similar strategy.
• Manna is real. One of my favorite stories in the bible is the story of the Israelites going through the desert. Starvation was a very justified fear. They were in the frigging desert after all. But God gave them Manna, some strange bread like substance. Only enough for the day, but ENOUGH for the day. Life, I have learned, does this for us. It will give us enough to get past the fears. Friends. Odd bits of money coming in. Second chances. People who send us love at just the right moment. My worst fears have always been interrupted by amazing grace to move me past the fears.
• Fears lie. I am not saying that the things we fear never come to pass, but mostly, they don’t. And in the meanwhile we’ve spent all this time trying to control things we cant control. All that emotional energy, sucking the life out of us. All that craziness. All that time NOT doing what we so want to do. And, when they do happen, we survive .We live in a world of second chances. Our God, in whatever incarnation we believe, is a God of second chances.
• Sometimes, what we most fear opens a new opportunity. That’s proven itself to me over and over again. But that second opportunity didn’t come when I was in the grip of fear. It came after the fear happened, after I acknowledged it, after I sat with it a while and let it wash over, and past me. Then, when I was no longer looking through my lens of fear, I could see the opportunity.

These were hard lessons for me to learn. I’m still not perfect in putting them to work. Fear still happens. I have accepted that I will never defeat it. It will rise with every change, every loss, every challenge, every angry person, every new possibility. Few days go by that I don’t have to stop, and let the fear wash over me. It is part of my battle of life. I am just glad that I have the weapons to beat it back.

And there is one other lesson I have learned. One that came from life, not counseling. A realization that has only recently shown itself to me, but is probably the most important lesson of all for me:

Everything I love most came as a result of battling back the fear. Being a father. My work in television. Writing. Photography, Painting. Love. My church work. Doing music. All had fear. All screamed at me “You can’t do this.” or “You will be rejected.” or “You don’t know squat about this, what makes you think you can do it?”

Screamed, I tell you. My father’s voice, I realize now. Harsh. Belittling. Making me fearful. Cowering. Paralyzed.

But eventually, I let the fear wash over me. I did the things. And they are all part of a life that is rich. Not perfect. Not without challenges, not without fear but rich, and good. And all of these things would not have come to me if I had not stopped and let the fear pass, then press on.

This is what I remind myself when fear strikes, as it does. That I need to push past it,  because on the other side, there is something I love, something that will enrich my life, something worth the battle against fear. And it is a battle, even today. A war even.

But I am a warrior now.

Be well. Travel wisely.

Tom

PS: The picture was taken in Rome.